


'The Mating Habits of the Tentacularis' and Other Must-Read Titles

by hoshi (ladylune)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mild Injuries, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective!Keith, Protective!Shiro, Team Dynamics, Team Vol-Voltron, alt summary x2: shiro saves keith and keith is Not Happy, hc that keith gets jealous when someone who isn't him saves/helps shiro, made up space knowledge, made up tentacle monsters lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 18:58:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7475997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylune/pseuds/hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week later, buried in heavy paper and surrounded by books, Keith wished he had never opened his stupid mouth.</p>
<p>Allura and Coran stood in the front with Pidge excitedly taking notes and firing off questions as they lectured about the current galaxy they were in and its many, many, many planets. Shiro sat by his side, attentively listening and taking short notes whenever something caught his interest, and, if it he didn’t pause and throw Keith an occasional warm smile every now and again, Keith would have honestly left to go train with some level three Gladiators /hours/ ago.</p>
<p>[or: keith cares a lot and is also kind of jealous and should probably just keep his mouth shut bc shiro]</p>
            </blockquote>





	'The Mating Habits of the Tentacularis' and Other Must-Read Titles

**Author's Note:**

> hello! for people who follow me on tumblr this fic might be vaguely familiar lmao. that's bc i originally posted it on tumblr, but bc i have anxiety when it comes to posting _anything_ on tumblr (and for the sake of organization too tbh) i'm moving it to ao3. so here *shoves this @ u* take the thing  & happy (re-?)reading!
> 
> **Pairing:** Sheith [Shiro x Keith]  
>  **Rating:** T  
>  **Summary:** A week later, buried in heavy paper and surrounded by books, Keith wished he had never opened his stupid mouth.  
>  **Prompt:** 12\. Knowledge  
>  **Warning(s):** the usual warnings that come with Hunk’s getting sick habit, uh possible OOC, un-beta’d, made up monsters and science and planets, cursing in internal thoughts while cursing said internal thoughts…  
>  **A/N:** this was my first ever attempt at writing team vol-voltron relationship dynamics so pls be kind i bruise like a peach

—X—

 

 

Landing on a planet who needed help was becoming a normal thing in his life and Keith still didn't know how he felt about it.

Sure, saving people was nice and all, but each planet was different and it didn't help that the information that they did have was usually incomplete and literally thousands of years old. Keith enjoyed traveling and kicking ass as much as the next person, but when they came to planets like this one— wild, humid, with barely breathable air and thick forestry that Keith had to swipe at once in a while— it was more stressful than anything else.

Keith couldn't even pronounce the planet's name, but he already didn't like it. There was just something... apprehensive about walking through these forests. The squelch of their steps through the ankle deep mud wasn't helping them stay hidden from possible predators and Keith found himself twitching at every rustle. He knew that something bad was going to happen soon, he could  _feel_ it and–There! Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move headed right for— “Shiro! Watch ou–”

“Shiro JUMP! The vines!” Pidge yelled, cutting him off.

It wasn’t the first time they had done it and it probably wouldn’t be the last time either, Keith thought, but he couldn’t find it in himself to get mad because when Shiro jumped, whatever had been lurking in the mud snapped up– just barely missing Shiro’s feet.

“What the quiznak!” Lance yelped as he jumped to join their leader. Hunk followed along, wrapping as much of his body around the nearest, thickest vine he could reach. Keith glared at them before letting his sword form in his hand and readying to fight whatever it was that had _dared_  try to attack them.

“Keith, don’t! It’s too dangerous!” Pidge called out.

Keith growled, “I eat danger for breakfast!”

“You know, I expected that from Lance, but I never thought I’d hear it from Keith,” Hunk wondered aloud.

“You’re right, Hunk! That  _is_  more of my style, huh?” Lance commented from his own vine.

“The stress must be getting to him,” Pidge said knowingly from their own perch.

“SHUT! UP!” Keith yelled as he started swinging blindly, stabbing the mud in the hopes of hurting the monster that wanted to  _eat_  them.

“Keith,” came Shiro’s voice, “maybe you should climb up here with us. We can think of a better way to get out of this other than—”

Keith felt his lip curl, “NO,” he snapped, stubborn. Pidge might’ve saved Shiro’s life _this time_  but Keith was going to take this damn monster down if it was the last thing he— “WHOA!”

The mud monster moved at an unbelievable speed, Keith barely felt the thing wrapping around his leg until he was being dangled upside down over its disgusting mouth. He started struggling, slashing at the tentacle wrapped around his leg, but then the monster exhaled and all Keith could do was quickly move to cover his nose.

“Oh God, that’s  _rank_ ,” Lance said.

“It’s a defense mechanism, meant to knock out its prey! I read about it in the books Allura gave me yesterday and–”

The sound of Hunk gagging cut Pidge off and for once, Keith was glad to hear it.

“Pidge, what’s its weak point?” Shiro asked, and no, no, no, Keith just _knew_ he was going to do something stupid soon.

He struggled harder, slashing at whatever he could reach and growling when the monster's grip just tightened around him.

“There’s its tiny suction cups underneath its tentacles?" Pidge threw out, "Uh, the... Oh! The little air holes on top of its head, and of course, its mouth–”

“Mouth! Got it!” Shiro said before the man was cutting his vine to swing, flip, and  _jump_ right into the dark, razor teeth lined hole that was the monster’s mouth.

Keith could only watch in shock as the rest of the team screamed out Shiro’s name in varying degrees of alarm. The monster’s mouth closed as soon as Shiro fell into it and Keith had a second of overwhelming panic before he was being whipped through the air. His friends screaming in terror was the last thing he heard before his body collided with an unyielding tree and he saw no more.

 

.

 

When he came to, his blurry vision told him that he was in the cockpit of the Black Lion.

“S-Shiro…” he murmured before wincing when his killer headache caught up with him.

An arm wrapped gently around his waist, pulling him closer to the broad chest he was leaning against. “Shhh,” he heard Shiro murmur, “you’re okay, Keith, we’re going back to the Castle.”

Keith allowed himself to melt into the body supporting him, burying his face into Shiro’s neck when the light started piercing into his head like a thousand painful needles. “Monster?” He asked before he could slip away again.

“I took care of it,” Shiro answered, steady, confident, and without a hint of cockiness or arrogance. Definitely Shiro, Keith thought, no one else would just claim to have single handedly beaten a crazy tentacle monster without bragging about it.

“You stink,” Keith muttered, wanting to articulate that he meant that word in more ways than just his smell but unable to find the brain cells to do so.

It was okay though, because with the way Shiro chuckled, Keith was sure that he got the message.

 

.

 

“Knock, knock.”

Keith looked up from the book he was reading and frowned at their handsome and brave, but definitely  _stupid_  leader.

“You’re still mad at me?” Shiro asked, with an exasperated smile.

“You expect me to forgive you just because you saved me?” Keith asked while trying his best to look down at the taller man from his position in the pillow nest everyone had made around him.

Shiro crossed his arms, “Most people would, you know.”

Keith, “Well, I’m not most people,” he sniped, quickly looking away before adding a quiet, “and it’s not like I got an apology or anything.”

“I’m not going to apologize for saving your life!” Shiro blurted out, cheeks reddening with an incredulous anger.

“Then don’t expect me to stop being mad at you.”

Shiro sighed, running a hand through the white hair of his fringe– obviously frustrated. “Keith, I don’t know what you want me to do–”

“I want you to stop putting yourself in unnecessary danger, Shiro!” He couldn’t help but snap, “I don’t need you to protect me like I’m some– some kind of damsel in distress–”

“I’ve never thought of you that way,” Shiro gritted out, shoulders tense, “And you’re being extremely unfair right now.”

Keith threw his hands up, “How am I being unfair?!”

“Why do  _you_  get to always jump to save me, but when  _I_  do it, you act as if I’m breaking a thousand rules! How do you think I feel when you always push me out of the way and fight my battles for me?!”

“I don’t want you to get hurt!” Keith blurted out despite the blaring red ‘STOP TALKING STOP TALKING STOP TALKING’ warning signals going off in his head.

“Well I don’t want you to get hurt either, okay!” Shiro yelled while gesturing angrily at the bandages that were still wrapped around Keith’s lightly sprained ankle.

“OKAY!” Keith snapped before ripping his gaze away to catch his breath and his racing heart.

After a long, long moment where they didn’t look at each other, Keith heard Shiro sigh before he gingerly took a seat on the corner of Keith’s bed. “So…” the man murmured, his voice cracking and sounding so uncharacteristically unsure that Keith couldn’t  _not_  look at him.

“So…” Keith repeated for a lack of anything better to say.

Shiro licked his lips before smiling a small, hesitant smile, “Are we… you know, okay?”

Keith let out his own sigh, eyes rolling as fond exasperation filled his chest with an almost overwhelming urge to hug the man. “Yeah,” he conceded, “we’re okay.” Then he frowned and punched Shiro’s flesh arm lightly, “But don’t think this conversation is over, Shirogane.”

Shiro gave a startled look at the use of his full last name before he bent over laughing, “It’s that serious, huh?” He asked after a second of catching his breath.

Keith glared, “As serious as you jumping into a monster’s mouth is stupid, yes.”

Shiro gave a wry little smile that was both fond and infuriatingly indulgent. “Okay,” he said, “and while you think of ways to get back at me for, you know, saving your life, how about you recommend a good book about,” he picked up the one that Keith had been reading last, eyebrows furrowing when he caught sight of the title, “uh… ‘The Mating Habits of the Tentacularis’…”

Keith refused to be cowed into embarrassment but couldn’t help the way he rapidly snatched the book from Shiro’s hands. “Allura doesn’t have a lot of books translated into English yet so I thought I would read about the ones that she did have,” he explained, pathetically unable to stop the defensiveness of his tone.

Shiro still looked adorably, adorably confused and God– his face just wasn’t at all fair when he did that stupid head tilting thing. “But… Tentacularis?” He asked.

“It’s the name of the monster that attacked us the other day,” he snapped, resisting the urge to cross his arms over his chest.

Shiro just sat there and stared for a while longer before looking at the other books in the pile sitting nearby. “‘Plant Fauna of the Orbion Planet’, ‘Birds of the Ultea Canyon’, ‘What Not to Use as Toilet Paper on the Haffix Nebula’…”

“Coran wrote the last one,” Keith blurted out as if that would somehow help his case.

Shiro returned back to staring at him, “That’s a pretty intensive reading list you’ve got there,” he said after another long moment. “Has Pidge been helping you compile them?”

This time Keith couldn’t help himself– he crossed his arms, “And if they did?” He challenged, “Knowledge is power, you know. Maybe you should get some books to read from Pidge too, Shiro. Maybe next time you’d know not to wade into the darker mud where the Tentacularis likes to sleep. Maybe next time you won’t have to jump into some monster’s mouth to save someone else.”

By the end of his rant, the blaring red ‘STOP TALKING STOP TALKING STOP TALKING’ warning signals were going off in his head again and the forced casual tone he had adopted had turned into something desperate. He had come close to babbling and if that wasn’t a sign that something was wrong with him, he didn’t know what was. Crap, what was he supposed to say if Shiro questioned what the hell that diatribe was? How was he supposed to answer a question  _he_  didn’t even know the answer to?

Shiro placed the book he had been holding down and–  _here it comes_ , Keith thought fervently to himself,  _here come the questions and the worry and the probable recommendation that he sleep another night in the recovery pod and—_  “You know, you’re right.”

Keith whipped his head up, eyes wide, “H-Huh?”

Shiro didn’t look worried, pissed, or even amused. His face was actually quite grim and serious— the ‘Leader Face’ Lance had once called it; this was Shiro’s Leader Face.

“You’re right,” he repeated, “we’ve spent all this time just figuring out ways to fight and train for the worst, when we should’ve been studying the enemy. There is nothing more dangerous on the battlefield than a lack of knowledge, and I can’t believe I’ve forgotten that.” He ran his eyes over the spines of the books, seemingly absorbing their names as he sat there and thought. “We should have Allura and Coran at least explain the basics of whatever galaxy we’re in right now,” he murmured more to himself than to Keith, and it was at that point that Keith knew that he had lost Shiro to his musings.

As if to prove himself further, Shiro stood up. “I’m going to bounce ideas off of Allura and Coran… they’ll probably have some ideas on how to educate us more about what we’re fighting and what we should be expecting out there.” Then, as if acting on an afterthought, he turned back to Keith, a warm smile on his face, “Thanks Keith,” he said before turning on his heel and leaving.

 

.

 

A week later, buried in heavy paper and surrounded by books, Keith wished he had never opened his stupid mouth.

Allura and Coran stood in the front with Pidge excitedly taking notes and firing off questions as they lectured about the current galaxy they were in and its many, many,  _many_ planets. Shiro sat by his side, attentively listening and taking short notes whenever something caught his interest, and, if it he didn’t pause and throw Keith an occasional warm smile every now and again, Keith would have honestly left to go train with some level three Gladiators  **hours**  ago.

“Thanks for the idea, Keith,” Shiro whispered to him at some point, “This’ll definitely help us to be more prepared when we go out in the field next time.”

Keith stared at Shiro’s face, so close to his own and smiling so warmly– so gratefully, and it would be so easy to just lean closer and—

A sharp jab in his ribs from the person sitting on his other side, knocked him out of his thoughts. “Yeah,  _thanks_  Keith,” Lance said, voice dripping with sarcasm and a badly hidden want to wring his neck.

“Are you boys paying attention!” Allura snapped from the front, taking this lesson as seriously as she did battle.

Shiro answered in affirmative, something that Lance echoed with childish petulance– Hunk answering in stutters seconds too late when Lance not-so-secretly nudged him.

Allura sighed, “And you, Keith? Are you paying attention as well? This was  _your_  idea, was it not?”

Keith saw Shiro turn to him with a proud smile in the corner of his eye, and gave a sigh of his own in response. “Yes ma’am,” he muttered, not even bothering to turn when Lance landed another painful elbow jab to his ribs.

 

 

—X—

**Author's Note:**

> wao you made it all the way to the end haha! there's going to be at least 3 parts and they should be up soon? but no promises lol
> 
> thank you for reading!! kudos are buttons of love and comments shall be returned with my happy tears lmao. if you wanna say hi or just scream in sheith hell with me, i'm always on my **[TWITTER](https://twitter.com/hoshiwrites)** and regularly check my **[TUMBLR](http://hoshiwrites.tumblr.com/)** as well.
> 
> until next time~


End file.
